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About Us / What We Do

The Olean Fire Department is located in the Southeastern part of Cattaraugus County in Western New York. Our department is a municipal department whose members are on a paid status. We operate out of 2 fire stations that protect a primarily residential area with a large industrial base. We service a population around 14,000 – 15,000. We cover 6 square miles; doing approximately 2800 EMS/Ambulance transports and 1500 Fire/Rescue/EMS calls. The city is an industrial/residential micro-metropolitan community. We have industries such as Dresser/Rand Turbo Division; plastic/epoxy manufacturing, CYTEC & Dexter/Loctite; a knife manufacturing, Cutco/Vector/Alcas/Kabar; Dal-Tile company; bread making, Stroehmans Bakery; and electronic manufacturing. The City was also home to the Corporate Headquarters of Coach USA and currently Cutco/Alcas/Vector/Kabar. The Alleghany River runs through the city at the southern end; and two major Norfolk/Southern lines with a yard terminal run both north to south and east to west. We provide the normal run of EMS/RESCUE/FIRE/HAZ-MAT service to the City and Town of Olean, along with running the Building Codes; Zoning; and Inspectors Department and Emergency Management. The Code Enforcement Division provides fire inspections, building permits, certification of occupancy, demolition permits, plumbing and electrical inspection, fire permits and community education related to all building construction, demolition and rehabilitation to any building or building site in the City of Olean. The Department is administered by the Fire Chief who conducts formal studies, formulates long and short term planning, coordinates allocation of department resources, and manages the Department's 2+ million dollar annual budget.

Our Department consists of the following personnel:

1 Chief
4 Captains
4 Lieutenants
27 Firefighters
2 Code Enforcement Officers

We have 4 Platoons that work 3 days each. Our work schedules are broken down into 9 hour days and 15 hour nights, with each crew working a 24 hour Sunday every 4 weeks. Each week crews rotate between their day shifts and night shifts. There is 1 Officer and 3 firefighters that work out of Central Fire Station and 1 Officer and 2 Firefighters that work out of Fire Station #1.

Central Fire Station – 542 North Union Street
1 Engine
1 Aerial Ladder Truck
2 Ambulances (Both Advanced Life Support)

Fire Station #1 – 112 South First Street
1 Engine
1 Ambulance (Advanced Life Support)
1 Rescue Boat
1 Fire Investigation Van

We are members of the New York State Professional Firefighters Association, the International Association of Firefighters (Local 1796), AFL-CIO and the Southwestern Regional Emergency Services.

Today the name Fire Department is an antiquated term. The name should be Emergency Department since Olean’s Bravest stand ready to assist citizens with everything from flooded basements to terrorist attacks. Look over the following list to see if you realized your fire department handles all of these incidents and more.

•  Assists in evacuating people from flooded homes.

• Extinguishes car fires, brush fires and dumpster fires.

• Investigate Carbon-monoxide problems.

• Assists with public fire education in the work place and all schools.

• Responds to motor vehicle accidents to provide first aid, basic life support, as well as advanced life support to extricate trapped victims, and to contain spills of oil, gasoline and anti-freeze.

• Responds to ambulance calls. The Fire Department operates the ambulance for all types of ALS (Advanced Life Support) and BLS (Basic Life Support) ambulance calls. We have 3 ALS ambulances, 1 ALS engine company and 1 BLS engine company.

• Responds to dangerous chemical spills.

• Responds to power lines down.

• Responds to Natural Gas leaks.

• Responds to drowning victims whether they are in the river, a creek, or in a home swimming pool.

• Responds to High-Angle Rescues where people are trapped or injured and might fall some distance like a high-rise ledge or roof, a microwave antennae like the phone company has, or even a small cliff.

• Responds to Search and Rescue incidents where someone might be lost or missing.

• Responds to Confined Space incidents where someone might be sick or injured inside a confined space like a worker cleaning the inside of the tanks at Cytek.

• Responds to Radiological (Radiation) incidents to monitor radiation, assist victims and possibly contain radioactive materials.

• Responds to Mass Casualty incidents where large numbers of people may have been injured to provide triage, first aid and transport to hospitals.

• Responds to building collapses.